


Revenant

by imogene_lovelace



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-06
Updated: 2006-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:35:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29122755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogene_lovelace/pseuds/imogene_lovelace
Summary: Remus and Sirius are reunited afterPrisoner of Azkaban.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **revenant** : one that returns after death or a long absence

Remus Lupin knocked over his chair in his haste to see the message brought by the owl that was now sitting on his windowsill, preening its toes. He had knocked over the same chair, several glasses of water, and once an entire pot of tea at the arrival of the previous owls he had received since taking up residence in his secluded cottage after his departure from Hogwarts. So far, each owl had brought unfailingly boring news, and he'd sent them all off with an annoyance that greatly puzzled the owls. But maybe, just maybe, this would be the one. 

He unfolded the parchment with trembling fingers, and his stomach danced a little polka of joy when he recognized the handwriting. 

_Howl at the moon, where we used to. Sunday midnight._

That was all the note said, but he read it over and over, savoring each of the few words and reciting them in his head to the tune of the author's voice. The owl was rewarded with a scrap of meat from his table and wondered at its good fortune. 

********** 

Sunday midnight found Remus waiting anxiously at a dark street corner in the village where he and Sirius had lived after leaving Hogwarts. He'd been there for an hour already, just in case. But it was a few minutes after midnight when a dark, raggedy figure stepped out of the shadows, followed by a large, winged beast. Remus knew better than to utter his name aloud, even in so remote a place, so he just embraced the other man and held him tight without a word. 

"I was afraid you wouldn't be able to come," said Sirius Black. "I saw in the paper that you'd resigned, but I had no idea if you still had that old house, or if you were in any trouble because of me. And I hoped you hadn't forgotten...here..." 

"Never!" exclaimed Remus. He wondered how Sirius could even think that he might have forgotten this spot, where they had met so many nights, giddy with young love but fearful of discovery. How foolish it seemed now, when they had so much more reason to be afraid. 

Buckbeak provided stealthy transportation back to Remus' little house in the country. He'd bought it years ago, a place where he could be away from people when the change took him. Since he'd been taking his potion it wasn't really necessary, but he kept it all the same, and it was here that he retired after he left Hogwarts, to wait for word from Sirius. He had hoped that Sirius would think to send an owl here, and now it was the perfect hiding place for an outed werewolf and an escaped convict. 

Remus hadn't expected to feel quite so awkward around his former lover. Former? That made it sound like they would be just friends from now on---would they? Remus wasn't sure. Twelve years in Azkaban was a long, brutal time, and Remus didn't know if Sirius still felt the same way about him. Or even if he did, if he was too scarred and traumatized to resume their relationship in the same way as before. Remus was spared the tentative dance of advance and possible rebuff at least until they reached his cabin---it was hard to talk while riding on the back of a hippogriff. But seated behind Sirius, arms around him to keep from falling off---at least that was how he justified it to himself---Remus realized that his own feelings hadn't changed a bit. It felt too good, too right, to feel Sirius' body against his own. The man in front of him might be different after twelve years of hell, but it was still his Sirius. 

********** 

In the washroom of Remus' small cabin, Sirius was thanking whatever gods might be listening for the unit on wizard dentistry in Health class. He still remembered some of the spells (that was one corner of his mind that the dementors apparently hadn't thought worth bothering with), and he was able to greatly improve the rather sorry state of his teeth. Not perfect, of course, nothing about him would ever be or look as good as before, but he was at least presentable. He had bathed, shaved, combed his hair, changed into clean robes, and now he surveyed himself sadly in the mirror. 

"You look like you've seen better days," it chirped at him. 

Sirius tried to glare coldly at it, but found this unsatisfying since he ended up glaring at his own image. He had been so proud of his body once, but now he was thin, pinched, ragged-looking despite all his best efforts. At least he didn't look quite as wretched as he had back at Hogwarts---he'd been able to scavenge a little more food since then. All the same, Sirius doubted that Remus could possibly find him attractive anymore. Remus, on the other hand, was quite as handsome as ever. Older, definitely, but it just made him look more distinguished, less boyish. Not that his clothes showed it off particularly, but Sirius could tell that his body was still muscular, his wolfish strength rippling below the surface of his rumpled professor's garb. God, he was sexy, and here was Sirius, thinking he looked a bit like a drowned cat, tarnished in body, mind, and soul. 

Sirius didn't even know if Remus still felt that way about him. After all, a man could, maybe even should, move on in twelve years. Sirius had nurtured his little ember of love all that time, treasuring it, hiding it from the dementors so they couldn't take it from him---that and his dreams of revenge were all that kept him going, kept him some vague approximation of sane, or at least of sane's distant relation. Remus had thought he was a traitor, which hurt, badly, but hadn't he himself suspected Remus before he learned it had been Peter betraying them all along? And Peter had done a perfect job of framing him, so that no matter how much Remus had wanted to believe in Sirius' innocence, the evidence would have seemed overwhelming. So Remus would naturally have stopped loving Sirius long ago. And now that he knew the truth? He was still over it, probably, had other lovers, maybe even now, was just helping an old friend, nothing more. If Sirius had been his old self, if he still looked like he once did, he would have sauntered into the next room, confident in his own sex appeal, and set about seducing Remus. Like he had a long time ago. But he wasn't his old self, so he merely stepped timidly into the doorway of the room where Remus sat reading by the fire. 

Remus looked up when he heard the footsteps and nearly gasped. Sirius was clean, groomed, scraggly beard gone---even his teeth were white again!---and Remus couldn't help thinking that after all this, he still cleaned up nice. He was thinner, certainly, more haggard, but damn, he was still sexy. Remus tried to fight down the rising wave of desire. This was not the time. The man had escaped from prison and spent months on the run, and Remus really doubted that he would appreciate being jumped by an aging werewolf who had never gotten over his first love. So why was he using his most seductive tone in saying, "Sirius...you look...good"? 

For an agonizing moment Sirius thought Remus was making fun of him, but there was no jest in the man's voice. Remus couldn't possibly still be attracted to him...could he? There was only one way to find out---it was time to pull the seductive drawl out of cold storage. 

"You're looking pretty good yourself, Moony. Same as ever." 

Remus looked just interested enough to make him bolder, so Sirius tucked his hair behind his right ear---it was an old signal of theirs, for when they were out with people who didn't know, which was most people. It meant, "think of some way to get out of here, because I want to take you home and shag you as soon as possible." If Remus wasn't interested, all he had to do was pretend he didn't remember. 

Remus definitely remembered. Seeing Sirius---his Sirius still, after all this time!---execute the familiar gesture sent all his resolve about being considerate and taking things slow crashing down. With a little growl ( _how I love that growl!_ thought Sirius), he leapt from his chair and pulled Sirius into his arms. 

"I've missed you, Padfoot," he said, before capturing Sirius' mouth with his own. 

Remus was convinced that he had just uttered the understatement of the century, if not the millennium. Missed him? Having Sirius' body pressed against his own now seemed more vital to him than oxygen or the beating of his own heart. How had he lived without the way Sirius' tongue explored his mouth; how had he existed without feeling the thrust of Sirius' hips grinding against his own? And his scent---could it be possible that he hadn't smelled it for twelve years? When they were young, his heightened werewolf senses had at times resulted in his getting hard merely from smelling Sirius walk into a room. He was certainly hard now---very, very hard, and so was Sirius, and Remus thought he would die if he didn't get to touch him immediately. He fumbled with Sirius' robes, not an easy task when the man simply wouldn't stop thrusting deliciously against him, and finally found what he was looking for. Sirius gasped and bucked against his hand. 

Somehow they had found a wall, and Sirius found himself being pushed against it by Remus' body, with Remus' tongue in his mouth and Remus' hand on his cock. He briefly thought that if only Remus would keep touching him like that, everything he had endured would fade away and he would exist only in this perfect moment of wanting. Wanting...he wanted to touch Remus as well, Remus who was hard and thrusting against him, inexplicably wanting him, so Sirius slid his hand inside his lover's robes and began stroking his cock. Remus growled again, a sexy, soft little growl that drove Sirius wild, and they moved their hands in unison, increasing the pace as their breaths came in short, ragged gasps. Remus moaned his name into Sirius' hair with his release, and as Sirius came a moment later he was thinking about how it had been like this the first time, groping wildly while still almost fully dressed, too desperate to touch each other to stop for anything else. 

They held each other, still leaning against the wall, and after a moment Remus realized that Sirius was crying. He fought back a rising panic---had this been a huge mistake? 

"What's wrong?" he asked tenderly. 

"Twelve years," said a muffled voice into his chest. "I can't believe it's been that long since I last held you. And I can't believe you still want me, after all this time..." 

"I never stopped wanting you, Sirius. I hope you can believe that." Remus led Sirius toward the fireplace, an arm around his shoulders. "Let's get out of these robes...I'm afraid they've gotten a bit sticky." 

Sirius managed a laugh. "We do have a knack for doing these things out of order, don't we?" He allowed Remus to pull his robes off.


	2. Chapter 2

The light from the fireplace danced over Remus' bare skin, which Sirius was lovingly inspecting. "I used to know all of your scars," he said softly. "Now there are quite a few I don't recognize. But don't worry, I'll soon become acquainted with them." He licked a small, thin line on Remus' right hip. "Where is this from?" 

"Got caught in a rosebush when I was a wolf, a few years ago. Damn thorns." 

"A rose by any other name...my poor, dear Moony. Even the flowers have it in for you." 

"Now that one I know you recognize." Sirius was now licking a matched set of puncture wounds on Remus' side. They were from his teeth, Padfoot's teeth, during a play fight that had gotten a little too rough. It had also aroused their passion---when morning came they'd had frantic sex on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. Sirius had discovered that although Remus was sore and cranky once he'd fully woken up after his transformations, while he was still groggy and his animal instincts hadn't quite faded it was fairly easy to entice him to pound Sirius into whatever surface was available. At first Sirius had wondered if he should feel guilty for taking advantage of Remus this way, but Remus had never objected to the post-coital glow taking the edge off his werewolf hangover. Sirius had insisted that James and Peter _"go get breakfast; I'll sit with him 'til he wakes up"_ for most of their seventh year. 

Sirius smiled, stirred by the memory. "And these must have been me too." He traced his fingers over a much more recent set of scars on Remus' shoulder, from the night when they had confronted Peter but he had escaped when Remus transformed, dangerous without his potion. Dangerous to the children, at least, but not to Padfoot. 

Remus suddenly realized that he would no longer have to face his nights as a wolf alone. Now Padfoot would be with him, as he once had, and they could prowl the woods together. This thought filled him with such love that he reached for Sirius---now busy licking the scars on his shoulder---and kissed him passionately. "There will be more scars," he murmured against Sirius' lips, "but you will be there to see them all." 

"And probably cause a few more too. I never mean to really hurt you, you know." 

"I don't mind. They remind me that I'm yours. And this," said Remus, tracing a scar his claws had made on Sirius' arm, "means you're mine." 

Sirius was suddenly, powerfully aware of Remus' naked body against his. "I can think of another way to show you that I'm yours." He spread his legs slightly and reached down to cup Remus' hardening cock. Remus growled and with a swift motion pushed Sirius onto his back, settling in between his legs and sucking at his throat. 

"You are mine, Padfoot," he whispered into Sirius' ear. "And I'll kill anyone who tries to take you from me again." Such threats of violence would once have shocked Sirius, but he had suffered alone for so long that now he welcomed Remus' vow to protect him. 

Remus' need to possess Sirius was overwhelming. Thanks to the _Accio_ spell, he didn't even have to leave his current position (namely, draped on top of Sirius, who was grinding quite insistently against him) to retrieve a bottle of oil. "Now, Moony," Sirius was moaning. 

Remus couldn't help laughing a little. "Still so impatient. Some things never change." 

"Impatient? I've been patient for TWELVE FUCKING YEARS." Sirius was having a hard time speaking due to the way Remus was stroking his cock. "So I'm not...oh...being at all unreasonable...uhhh...when I say that you'd better fuck me RIGHT NOW." 

Remus did as he was told. He started off slow and gentle (after all, it had been a long time), pressing Sirius legs' against his chest as he leaned in to bestow light kisses on his lips and gentle nips on his neck. The kisses soon became deeper and the nips harder, and after a few screams of "OH FUCK YES" from Sirius, Remus' baser instincts took over. _Still loud---that hasn't changed either,_ he thought. 

Sirius never wanted it to end. Having Remus inside him drove out all thought, all memory, until there was nothing but the pleasure and the scent of Remus surrounding him. But even after it did end, after Remus shuddered inside him and his own pleasure peaked in final, blissful oblivion, Sirius found that the demons in his mind didn't come back right away, that maybe as long as he lay here in Remus' arms, smelling his sweat and the pervasive aroma of sex, everything would be all right. 

********** 

They didn't wake up until the fire had died and the room had grown cold. Remus firmly instructed Sirius to stay out of the kitchen while dinner was being prepared, despite repeated protests that he really was capable of helping. Sirius had taken care of him so many times, holding him while his body was racked with the pain of transformation, keeping him out of trouble while he was a wolf, bandaging his wounds from when he fought with another animal or scratched and bit at himself. Remus welcomed the chance to take care of Sirius for a change. 

Sirius looked so thin and tired, and it made Remus want to feed him and rub his feet and bring him tea and tuck a blanket around him when he fell asleep in the chair. Remus wanted to prepare an eight-course feast for him, but the pantry wasn't well-stocked enough for that. _Why didn't I buy more exciting food?_ he berated himself. Sirius, however, praised the simple stew and bread as the best thing he'd eaten in years, and Remus' eyes temporarily dampened at the thought that he wasn't exaggerating in the slightest. Sirius ate ravenously, and it wasn't until he was mopping up the last of his stew with a piece of bread that he looked up at Remus, deeply chagrined. 

"God, I'm sorry, Moony," he said. "I seem to have forgotten all about table manners. My mother would be horrified." He managed a small grin at this. 

"Oh, no, please, don't be sorry." Remus fought to control his tears. He couldn't stand to hear Sirius apologizing for having bad table manners when he probably hadn't eaten at a table since they were young. He struggled to find words, but really, what words were there? "Just...don't," he finally stammered. 

"All right, but I am going to try to remember how to be civilized. You'll help me, won't you, Moony? You were always trying to get me to behave myself." Sirius started giggling at this. "Not that you were ever very successful." 

Remus sighed, nodding his agreement. When they were young it had just been about trying to dissuade Sirius from executing the more outrageous of his pranks, but later it had also been about trying to resist Sirius' attempts at seducing him in inappropriate places. The more likely it was that they might be caught, the more excited Sirius got. Sirius succeeded fairly often, since Remus usually found it nearly impossible to resist him, and Sirius knew it. Sirius would whisper what he wanted to do to Remus, heated breath tickling his ear, or slide a hand up his thigh, and Remus' usually stalwart self-control would dissolve into a quivering puddle of lust. He used to get angry at himself sometimes for allowing Sirius to command him so easily. 

"Which time are you thinking about?" asked Sirius, nudging Remus' foot under the table. "My favorite was when that Hogwarts house-elf caught me sucking you off in the pantry and I had to convince him that it would hurt his masters very, very much if he ever told on us." 

********** 

Later that evening, when the dishes were done and the fire rekindled (both tasks Remus had insisted on taking care of himself), they sat together on the sofa, being warmed by the blaze. Sirius was sipping a cup of tea with his feet in Remus' lap, and as Remus massaged them he was feeling very proud of himself for checking off so many items on his take-care-of-Sirius list. 

Sirius sighed contentedly. "Tell me a story, Moony." 

"Is that all that remains for you to properly feel like you're five years old again?" Remus smirked at him. 

"No, tell me a story about you. From your life. The Remus I know is twenty-two years old, and you're not him anymore. Well, you are him, but you're more also, you're different. I want to know YOU. I want to know everything that happened to you." 

_You might not like parts of it,_ Remus thought, but he didn't say it. He supposed that was the whole point, really; Sirius had to know all the bad things, all the painful things, to know who Remus was now. Even the parts that would hurt him, like his misery when he'd thought Sirius was a traitor, and the other lovers he'd had. Remus wanted to know what had happened to Sirius as well, although he knew it was horrible and part of him would prefer that both of them just never think of it again. He hoped that if Sirius would tell him about it, that maybe by sharing his pain Remus could take some of it away. But it wasn't time for that yet. First he would tell Sirius about himself. 

"Everything, Padfoot? That would take a very long time to tell." 

"So? It's not like there's much to do around here other than eat and sleep and shag. And we can't do that ALL the time. Although," Sirius said salaciously as he rubbed his foot against Remus' crotch, "we can certainly make a valiant effort." 

Remus gasped. "That is NOT the way to get me to tell you a story. Unless you want it to have a lot of naughty words in it." 

"Okay." Sirius' foot abruptly stopped moving. "No more distractions. Please continue." 

_Remus, you are an IDIOT,_ Remus said to himself. But he did want to tell Sirius about his life. He wanted Sirius to know it all and love him anyway. So he started talking about the easier things---the jobs he'd had and lost, the places he'd lived. Apparently Sirius still had a short attention span, at least when it came to listening to someone talk (Remus had nudged him awake in class more times than he could count), because after a while he began to look bored and his foot resumed its earlier stroking. Remus was too aroused to be offended. 

When Remus had given up all pretense of continuing to talk and was merely whimpering softly, Sirius decided that a new plan of action was called for. Setting his teacup on the floor, he slid down there himself and knelt in between Remus' legs. 

"Let's see if I still remember how to do this," he said, deftly unfastening Remus' robes. If someone had asked Sirius a few minutes earlier what Remus tasted like, he wouldn't have been able to tell them. But once he had Remus in his mouth, the taste was so familiar, so good, that he had to stay motionless for a moment just savoring it, his tongue swishing just the tiniest bit from side to side. 

"Padfoot, PLEASE," Remus begged. 

Sirius began to move then, taking Remus fully in his mouth and then backing off, slowly, sometimes doing things with his tongue that tore loud moans from his lover. After he came Remus grabbed Sirius' robes and dragged the other man into his lap for a hungry kiss. Tasting himself in Sirius' mouth was almost enough to make him weep with joy. 

Remus eventually released Sirius, somewhat reluctantly, in the interests of breathing, and he slumped back on the sofa, sated. 

"I would say that you DEFINITELY remember how to do that."


	3. Chapter 3

When Remus woke up the next morning, he briefly thought he had dreamt it all. It wouldn't have been the first time that he had awoken from dreams of Sirius only to find himself alone. But this time he wasn't alone---this time Sirius was beside him. He was still asleep, and he looked so peaceful, hair spilling over his eyes, arms wrapped around his pillow as he lay on his stomach. Remus propped himself up on one elbow just to gaze at him. He was beautiful, and Remus wanted to touch him, somehow afraid that if his hand didn't confirm what his eyes were telling him then the vision would disappear. 

He placed one arm gingerly over Sirius' back, trying to be careful not to wake him. It was late in the morning already---Remus was certainly not an early riser---but he imagined that Sirius must be exhausted. If he moved his arm just slightly he could rest his hand on the gentle slope where Sirius' back met the curve of his ass. Thinking this reminded Remus of the fact that he was hard, and the presence of his long lost lover in his bed did nothing to dampen his morning erection. _You will NOT wake him up,_ Remus told himself. _You had him less than twenty-four hours ago, and he's tired. He's been on the run from the dementors, for god's sake._

Properly chastised, Remus settled down next to Sirius, an arm still around him but not doing anything improper. He would be content to just hold him for a while. But Sirius stirred at the contact, and Remus berated himself for disturbing him at all. Sirius rolled onto his side, snuggling closer to Remus, pulling his arm around him and making adorable sleepy noises of contentment. Remus couldn't help gasping when Sirius thrust his ass squarely against his cock. Sweet torture--- _he must still be asleep._ But if Sirius was asleep, he seemed to be having some sort of erotic dream, because his grinding against Remus grew more insistent. Just when Remus didn't think he could take any more of this unconscious teasing, the movement stopped. "Good morning, lover," said Sirius, an amused lilt in his voice. "You're obviously wide awake." He wiggled his ass again, just a little. 

Remus felt horribly embarrassed. "I'm sorry," he said. "You must be tired. I didn't mean to wake you." Remus started to roll away, but Sirius grabbed his wrist to stop him. 

"Does it feel like I'm tired?" he asked as he placed Remus' hand on his erection, drawing his breath in sharply as it made contact. Sirius fumbled on the small table by the bed and found the oil. _He must have put it there last night,_ thought Remus. _Why didn't I notice? Clever man---always thinking ahead._ "Here, use this," Sirius was saying. "God, I want you." 

Remus hurriedly coated himself. "I didn't want you to think I was...too demanding." 

"Fuck, no, Moony. I don't see how that could even be possible. I...FUCK!" he shouted as Remus sheathed himself inside. After that Sirius stopped speaking coherently and merely whimpered with pleasure. They were now entangled in the most intimate spoon possible, and as the pace of Remus' thrusting increased so did the frequency and volume of Sirius' moans. When the moans turned into a series of obscenities, Remus knew Sirius was close and began moving his hand on Sirius' cock in time with his thrusts. The pulse of release into his fingers felt like holy water. 

"God, you're amazing, Moony," Sirius panted. "Even better than I remembered." 

"So are you, Padfoot. And I spent a LOT of time remembering." Even when he had thought Sirius was a traitor, Remus hadn't been able to stop the memories of what they'd shared. Lying in bed, alone, late at night, he would touch himself while thinking of Sirius and feel horribly guilty afterward for still wanting the man who he'd believed killed his friends. 

Remus forced these thoughts from his mind. _It doesn't matter; he's here now and he never betrayed us and maybe I knew it, deep down, all along._ It was what he wanted to believe. 

********** 

Remus was having a hard time saying what he thought he should say. He kept looking up from the book that he wasn't really reading and opening his mouth to speak to Sirius, and he kept closing his mouth and bowing his head again. He felt as if he were about to walk up to a land mine and poke it with a stick. Maybe it would turn out that the danger was past, that the mine was dead, but maybe it would blow up and take both of them with it. 

"Sirius, do you think maybe we should talk about it?" 

"Talk about what?" asked Sirius, not lifting his eyes from the _Daily Prophet_. 

"About what I thought, for so long." Remus couldn't bring himself to say, _About when I thought you were a traitor_. "About how sorry I am. I should have known; I should have trusted you..." 

"Look, Moony," said Sirius sharply as he fixed his eyes on Remus, and it was his use of the affectionate nickname during this grave discussion that convinced Remus that things really would be all right. "I don't blame you. I blame Peter. He was such a shrewd little bastard, always playing the innocent and convincing people that others were to blame. You'll remember that it was you, me, and James who usually got in trouble at school; he had everyone else believing that he was just roped into all our pranks against his will. He had me suspecting things about you, too, because of...I'm ashamed to even say it now, but you know. He'd tell me you said things to him, about times getting better for werewolves, and I thought that maybe my feelings for you had made me blind. It wasn't until that day that I realized they'd all been lies." 

"I thought that too," said Remus. "That I'd been blind." Truthfully, he had been frightened by the intensity of his passion for Sirius. It couldn't possibly be healthy, he had thought, the way his skin itched when he was in a room with Sirius and not touching him. It couldn't be normal to shag someone twice in one day and still want more. It couldn't be right to want to be with someone who could make him so angry he wanted to throw things; thoughts of violence always made Remus feel like the wolf was taking over. And most significantly, it couldn't be sane that whenever he considered not being with Sirius, he felt as if someone had ripped out a huge chunk of his insides and smeared them on the ground. It was that feeling that had forced him to forgive Sirius after the unfortunate incident with Snape. While Remus told himself that Sirius had been young and foolish and he'd changed, after that fateful Halloween he wondered if that had really been true or if he had just wanted to believe it so desperately. The worst part was that there had been no one he could talk to about it, no Sirius, no James, no Peter. Remus had only memory and doubt to keep him company, and doubt had proven to be a cold and ever present bedfellow. 

"Moony?" Sirius interrupted Remus' trip down misery lane. His brow was furrowed in concern. "Don't look like that. Please. I forgave you already, that night in the Shrieking Shack, and you forgave me, so let's forget it now. We lost twelve years because of this, and now that I have you back I refuse to waste any more time dwelling on the fucking past." He paused to consider this statement. "The only parts of the fucking past I will allow you to think about are the parts that actually involved fucking. Me," he added, suddenly realizing that it was quite probable that there were parts of Remus' past that involved fucking people who were not him, and that was something else that Sirius did not particularly want to think about. 

It occurred to Remus that perhaps one of the reasons they had shagged so much was that he was utterly incapable of telling Sirius how he was feeling at times like this, when love and pain and guilt and forgiveness and love were all smashed up into a wad that could only be dislodged by dragging Sirius into the bedroom and making him feel what Remus didn't know how to say. So Remus said nothing this time, but pounced on Sirius and kissed him with such intensity that the chair he was sitting on toppled over, depositing them both onto the floor. And as Remus dragged Sirius into the bedroom, he wondered if the great poets, whom he so admired for painting every corner of the human heart in words, occasionally heard from their lovers, "just shut up and shag me already!"


	4. Chapter 4

Sirius was beginning to worry that he was becoming a sex fiend. He simply couldn't get enough of Remus. He thought it might be a result of all those years of isolation---he hadn't touched another human in all his time in Azkaban. So any touch was now an intense sensation, and even the most simple touch from Remus was downright erotic. 

The most ridiculous incident so far was the haircut. Consciously, Sirius knew that getting one's hair cut is not an erotic experience. But the light little touches on his face, his neck, his ears (especially the ears!) and the knowledge that Remus was concentrating on him so intently had been quite arousing. When Remus had stepped back afterward to survey his handiwork, he had observed Sirius' new look---still a bit shaggy, as he liked, but significantly shorter---and also his erection. And Remus, dear, obliging man that he was, had knelt in the pile of discarded hair at their feet and gone down on him, making him come by grazing his teeth ever so lightly over his cock---Sirius had forgotten how much he liked that, but Remus clearly hadn't. 

Sirius liked how young the frequent sex made him feel---almost as if the past twelve years had never happened and they were still horny teenagers, shagging at every opportunity. Being alone in this cabin with Remus was constant opportunity, as they didn't have much else to do. Sirius' life was very simple at the moment: eat, sleep, feed Buckbeak, write letters to Harry, and shag Remus. It was almost like a honeymoon, if he ignored the fugitive-from-justice part. 

********** 

Standing in the doorway, Remus watched as Sirius chopped firewood. The summer day was warm and thus Sirius was clad only in a pair of trousers that clung delectably to his ass, which had recently regained its former stature as being one of Sirius' most striking features (to Remus' eyes, anyway). After several weeks of proper meals, and much encouragement from Remus to take second helpings of everything, Sirius was beginning to fill out again and was no longer disturbingly thin. 

Sirius had allowed Remus to pamper him for only a few days before insisting on performing much of the manual labor around the house. Remus, in his taking-care-of-Sirius mindset, had at first protested, but when he saw how much pleasure Sirius derived from the most mundane tasks, he relented. Remus wondered if even he himself would come to enjoy housework after a prolonged period of enforced idleness, as his current approach involved the minimum necessary to keep the house from becoming a complete sty. Given a choice between sweeping the floor and settling in his favorite chair with a good book, Remus usually chose the latter. 

_Sirius is just what this house needed,_ Remus thought. He supposed a house-elf would keep the place just as tidy, but he had never been able to afford one. _Besides,_ he thought, _Sirius is better company in so many other ways_. 

The one area that was entirely left to Remus was the matter of cooking. Sirius had never really learned to cook ( _"That's what house-elves are for"_ had always been Mrs. Black's philosophy). To his credit, he had tried to prepare meals for Remus, James, and Peter several times in the past, but they were always either undercooked (when he was too impatient to leave the oven on long enough), or burnt (when he got distracted and left the oven on too long). After one much more recent incident involving a small fire, Sirius had been banned from the kitchen except for purposes of washing the dishes. 

Sirius even cleaned things by hand that most wizards would solve with a simple spell. When Remus came upon him kneeling in front of the bathtub, at first he thought that Sirius was being sick. He rushed over only to find Sirius humming as he scrubbed at some soap scum with a brush. 

"Have you forgotten the _Scourgify_ spell?" Remus asked, truly puzzled. 

"No, but I like doing it this way. It makes me feel better. Like I'm cleaning my mind out at the same time. You know?" He looked up at Remus as if asking him to understand. 

If Remus thought that Sirius had gone a bit daft, he didn't say so. He simply nodded and kissed his forehead affectionately. "If you need me, I'll be reading." 

The flurry of chores had continued, and Remus noted that his house had never looked better. So far today Remus had found Sirius weeding the garden, fixing the broken shelf in the shed that Remus had been meaning to get around to for months, and doing push-ups on the kitchen floor. The last was part of Sirius' new exercise regimen, as he was determined to work his body back into some semblance of its former glory. He was at it every day in some form or another, using the massive volumes of Remus' _Complete Modern Encyclopedia of Wizarding_ as hand weights. 

_And sweet Merlin, it shows,_ thought Remus, watching the muscles in Sirius' back and arms ripple with each stroke of his axe. Remus tried to remember the reason he had come outside in the first place, failed, and decided it didn't really matter. 

Remus was still staring when Sirius stacked the last of the firewood and lodged his axe in the chopping block at a jaunty angle. "I didn't know I had an audience," Sirius said when he turned around, his voice as casual as possible but a slight twitching of his eyebrow conveying the thrill he got from knowing that Remus enjoyed looking at him. "How long have you been standing there?" 

"Long enough to get completely turned on watching you. I never knew wood chopping could be so enthralling." 

"I suppose it depends on whether the man doing the chopping is just some average bloke, or whether he's the sort of man who looks particularly good while shirtless and sweaty, muscles straining..." Sirius had been sauntering closer to Remus during this monologue, and now he was near enough for Remus to feel hot breath on his ear. "Maybe I should let you do some of the work around here after all. I bet you would look really fucking hot like that." 

"Um," said Remus, as the appropriate saucy comment rudely failed to appear in his mind. He was sure he would be able to think of it if Sirius' thigh weren't pressed up against his own quite like that. 

"Or," Sirius continued, pausing to lick the edge of Remus' ear, eliciting a very satisfying gasp and shudder from the ear's owner, "I could insist that you save all your energy for a more rewarding form of strenuous exercise." By this point Sirius was fiddling with the fastenings on Remus' robes. He would have figured them out sooner if his hand didn't keep brushing against Remus' very obvious erection. 

"Sirius, we're on the porch." Remus tried to muster his very best "I'm annoyed" voice, which was difficult when Sirius' hands were inside his robes and rubbing urgently across his abdomen. 

"So?" murmured Sirius into the hollow just above Remus' collarbone. "We're in the country...who's going to see?" 

"Bloody Buckbeak, for one," insisted Remus, grabbing Sirius' wrists and removing them from under his clothing. "And maybe today the nearest neighbors will decide to borrow a cup of sugar for the first time ever. So inside. Now." Remus shoved Sirius through the door, surprised by his own assertiveness, but one did not keep an escaped convict hidden from the Ministry by shagging him on the front porch. Not to mention the possibility of splinters. 

Sirius didn't protest, because the only thing hotter than shagging Moony outside was shagging Authoritative and In Charge Moony wherever Moony wanted. He jogged into the bedroom and turned around, hands hooked into the waistband of his pants to pull them as low as possible. The lust on Remus' face as he entered the room prompted Sirius to put on a little show, unbuttoning his pants ever so slowly, watching Remus' eyes fixated on his movements as he freed his erection from its confines and slid the pants gradually down over his hips. Remus licked his lips unconsciously. The sensual strip tease was interrupted when Sirius got his boots tangled in the pants and almost fell over, but Remus was too busy trying to remove his own clothing as quickly as possible to care. 

When all offending articles were lying in a pile on the floor, Remus lost no time in pinning Sirius to the bed, his tongue claiming an eager mouth. Sirius wrapped his legs around Remus' waist, allowing Remus' hand free access to slide up a slender thigh and over the curve of a firm ass, fingers caressing him there until Sirius writhed with need. 

"Do it, Moony, please, now," Sirius begged. Aiming for maximum leverage, Remus quickly flipped him over, and Sirius braced himself on his hands and knees as he felt a slick length entering him. He loved it this way, loved feeling that Remus was _taking_ him, loved the smug satisfaction of knowing that Remus wanted him so badly he couldn't hold back. 

"Ohgod, yes, that's good," Sirius moaned, thrusting back as Remus steadily increased the pace. "Fuck me harder, Moony!" he demanded, and then practically screamed with pleasure as Remus complied. Towards the end Sirius just chanted the word "fuck" over and over, with feeling, until he finally uttered a loud and unintelligible exclamation and collapsed in a sticky heap. Remus wasn't far behind. 

"It's a good thing we're way out here in the country," said Remus when he could breathe again. "I don't know who screams louder: me when I'm turning into a wolf, or you when we're shagging." This comment was rewarded with a good-natured pillow in the face. Remus had always teased Sirius about how loud he was, but secretly he thought it was extremely hot. He delighted in knowing that Sirius came so unhinged because of him. Once he had even kept track of how many times he made Sirius curse when they had sex, and he was always very proud of himself when he exceeded his previous record. It was hard, though, because he usually got so caught up in what he was doing that he lost count. 

********** 

"I don't think that's edible," Remus said as he entered the kitchen. 

"Huh? Oh." Sirius removed the end of his quill from his mouth and looked up from the letter he was scrutinizing. "I can't figure out how to say it properly. Dear Harry, Your godfather is a gigantic poof and is shagging your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Love, a concerned citizen." 

"Former teacher." Remus removed the lid from a tin of biscuits and held it across the kitchen table to Sirius, who took one. "You could just wait and tell him in person." 

Sirius chewed on the biscuit with exactly the same concerned expression that he'd had with the quill in his mouth. "But I feel like I'm hiding something from him. Aside from that wretched aunt and uncle I'm the only family he's got, and I want him to know who I really am. And that includes knowing about us. Who knows when it'll be safe to actually see him again?" 

"Okay, then, how about, 'By the way, Harry, did you know that in addition to being a werewolf, Professor Lupin is absolutely fantastic in bed?'" 

Sirius gave Remus a You Are Not Helping Look. 

Remus sat down at the table next to Sirius and nibbled at a biscuit. After a moment he said, "Dear Harry, This morning Lupin told me that he loves me and he wants us to be together for the rest of our lives, because he feels like part of him went missing when I was gone and now he's been put back together. Even though I told him he's gone totally out of his head and I'm just in it for the sex, I hope you get the idea. Love, Sirius." 

The light thud they both heard was the sound of Sirius' biscuit hitting the table. Remus was staring down at his hands, twirling his own biscuit between his fingers, afraid to look at Sirius. The silence stretched out between them, and Sirius wished he could make it shorter but he had to come up with the right words. Eventually he spoke, very slowly and quietly. 

"Dear Harry, You know that Remus and I were friends in school, and that we're friends again now, but what you don't know is that I've been madly in love with him the whole time, whether I told him so or not. I know I asked you to come and live with me when this is all over, and I hope you won't mind if Remus comes too. Love, Sirius." 

Remus had to wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his robes before looking up at Sirius. He started to say something, but changed his mind and instead pulled Sirius to him for a fierce kiss. Unwilling to relinquish contact even after their lips parted, Remus dusted his fingers lightly over Sirius' hand. 

Sirius smiled mischievously. "I thought of leaving in the part about you being such a terrific shag, but it might be too much for Harry. The poor boy is only fourteen." 

********** 

Once the owl bearing this weighty missive was sent off, Sirius was a nervous wreck for the next two weeks until he finally received a reply. When he heard the familiar tapping at the window, he knocked over not only his chair but also the pot of soup on the table as he rushed to retrieve the letter. 

"Dear Sirius (and Prof. Lupin)," it read. "I'm really happy for you, and I want you to know that this doesn't change anything as far as I'm concerned, except that now I'll be able to ask Prof. Lupin for help with my homework. Hermione wasn't surprised at all - sometimes I don't see how she manages to know everything. She sends her best and so does Ron. My scar hasn't hurt lately but Draco Malfoy is being a total wanker. Love, Harry." 

The owl was less surprised this time when it received a bit of meat (taken from the spilled soup on the floor) for its trouble, as it had learned that the residents of this particular house were inclined to random bursts of excitement over these little scraps of parchment. It decided to enjoy its treat outside, however, as the enthusiastic burst of snogging that followed was distractingly noisy.


End file.
